


Four Years Shy of a Love Everlasting

by twinyards



Category: Addicted Series - Krista Ritchie & Becca Ritchie, Calloway Sisters Series - Krista Ritchie & Becca Ritchie
Genre: F/M, so soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-04-14 06:30:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14130123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twinyards/pseuds/twinyards
Summary: We were two lost souls, wandering a plane of existence without seeing the path. Now, we are found, painting our way bright red to show everyone how far we’ve come. I don’t know what’s around the next corner. I don’t want to know until I get there. The greatest thing about this discovery, about lighting the path and finding our way, is stopping to enjoy the view.





	Four Years Shy of a Love Everlasting

**Author's Note:**

> For Eri, the biggest Gillow shipper I've ever met. I hope this ignites your breadcrumb loving heart.

#  **WILLOW HALE**

In the dark, I think the world seems like a much less scary place. When the light has faded into something dim, it becomes a curtain, sheltering you from your fears. Some people are afraid of the encroaching blackness, of the secrets it might hold, but I love it. I love that in the dark, truths do not frighten me. At least not here.

The after hours image of Superheroes & Scones is something close to ethereal, at least to my eyes. Outside the frosted windows, a few fans still linger, waiting to catch a glimpse of my celebrity brother and his wife, or their son. It’s commonplace, and within the hour even the most diehard of fans will fade away, urged home by the cold and the lingering hope that they can try again for a glimpse tomorrow. Inside, the lights are off save for the breakroom, giving just enough glow within the rows of comic shelves and red vinyl booths for me to see if I need to walk. The air is calm. Everything is quiet.

I love this place. I love that I can lose myself for hours between the shelves, drifting from one universe to the next while I escape my own to become something superhuman. I love that, despite my naturally clumsy nature, I could go behind the counter and make espressos and all manner of coffees and teas if I wanted. I love the way the red booths and polished tile look like they came from another time, like this place had history before we ever stepped foot inside. But more than anything else, I love the memories I made here.

Months ago, I met my brother (well,  _ brothers _ , but I didn’t know that at the time) between rows of comics for the first time. Loren Hale is an intimidating sight to behold, Ryke Meadows even more so, but they welcomed me. They offered me a family and a home, and never pushed when I sought to prove that that was all I wanted. And behind the counter, where I work and laugh and spend the majority of my days, is where I met Garrison.

Maya was my first friend in Philly, but Garrison became my best friend. What a wild world it is, to be the shy girl who knocks things over and trips over her own tongue, who befriends the bad boy who’s never pictured life beyond the crushing confines of a gated neighborhood and expectations he never wanted to fulfill. 

And what an even stranger world to think that that friendship moved onward and upward, and that now I sit side by side with a boy who never thought he’d be a good man, and hold his hand without fear.

What a wonderful world it is for me, simple Willow Hale, to love and be loved by Garrison Abbey.

“I still can’t believe you’re leaving,” Garrison sighs, and his thumb runs over the back of my hand in comfort. I’ve always wondered if he knows he does this, or if his desire to calm me is subconscious. “And I’m not going with you.”

The statement pulls at my stomach, but I try not to let it dampen the whimsy of this night. In three short days, I’ll be boarding a plane to London, gone for four years in college, and Garrison will be here, being mentored by Connor Cobalt. We’ve broached the subject before, but only in the shortest of bursts. Neither of us want to admit what it could mean. Four years is a long time. Feelings shift and change, and we’ll be meeting new people every day.

If I linger on it too long, I’ll be crushed by the anxiety of  _ what if _ s. The truth is, this week I am Garrison Abbey’s girl. He holds  _ my _ hand and kisses  _ my  _ cheek and sends  _ me _ gifsets he knows I’ll love when we’re sitting across from each other on my bed, just because he wants to see me smile. But a week, a month, a year from now, someone else could come along and capture his attention. There’s no certainty that Garrison will love me in four years. Logistically, I can’t guarantee that. But I’m learning not to be afraid.

Courtesy of Daisy, I have this theory. I believe that everyone is born with a purpose. Sometimes they’re grand. Some people are born to start revolutions and build impossible feats and become world leaders. And sometimes they’re small. Some people are born simply to exist for another person. Sometimes, your purpose to be a sister or a daughter, a friend or a lover. Sometimes, you’re born because maybe someone else wouldn’t meet their true potential without you. 

And I believe, in turn, the ladder climbs. You raise one person to their true purpose, and they raise another, and they another, until a baby is born who will one day cure cancer or a invent a flying car or become a scientist who discovers life on other planets. 

I believe that Garrison is my purpose. Or at least a part of it.

I squeeze Garrison’s hand, a small comfort I can offer. “You’ll be doing great things while I’m gone,” I tell him, because I believe it.

Garrison doesn’t see much in himself. He sees the boy he was before I met him, who frightened our friends and lived inside a well of rage so deep he saw no way to claw himself out. I try to remind him that while my brother offered him a rope, Garrison did all the hard work of pulling himself up. One day, I hope I won’t have to remind him. What I want most for Garrison is for him to believe in himself the way I believe in him. The way Lily and Lo and Connor and Daisy do. Even Ryke and Rose have taken to him over time.

“I do great things with you,” he murmurs, shifting closer but stopping before our shoulders touch. I can hear the sadness in his voice, the doubt. As I watch him, his Adam’s apple bobs with tense swallows, and I think if it wasn’t so dark, there might be a glassy film over his eyes. “You make me so much better. At everything. For everyone. What if I can’t be good fucking person without you?”

“You’re a much better man than you believe yourself to be,” I whisper.

I lean my head against his shoulder, answering his body’s subtle request for more comfort from my touch. His tense shoulders relax slightly with me pressed against him. I am a salve to his sore muscles, a cure for his aches and pains and tension. When he presses a kiss to my temple, I smile into the fabric of his t-shirt. Tender moments like this with Garrison are such precious things. I capture them like fireflies in a glass jar, admiring them for a moment before releasing them back into the world and trusting them to return to me.

“Tell me something that will make me feel better about weird English guys hitting on you when I’m not there to intimidate the shit out of them,” he sighs, trying to lighten the mood and asking for reassurance at the same time. Only with me, and very rarely with Lo, does he let himself be this vulnerable.

“If weird English guys hit on me, I’ll tell them I’m sorry, but I’m Garrison’s girl,” a blush creeps up to my cheeks. After all this time, I still flush with embarrassment with declarations like this. “And he’s waiting for me.”

Garrison goes still, and for a blinding moment my heart races, worried I’ve said the wrong thing. My relationship with Garrison is a parade of firsts. I’m learning everyday, navigating a new world. I don’t know if there are rules. Where I should bend and where I should stay firm. Do I say what I feel, or express it with my actions? I am always twisting with anxiety, pondering what I’ve said and done and praying I did it right. 

Garrison’s arms twine around me, careful and slow until I nuzzle further against him in permission for this embrace, and my worries ebb away. So rarely are they wounded in truth. I think Garrison finds my confusion endearing. I think he likes being my first everything, even if I’m embarrassed by my lack of knowledge on a daily basis.  

“You know I’ll wait for you, right?” 

My heart goes still. I think, deep down, I wanted to hear these words from him, but refused to let myself ask for them. I want to hear them because they bring me a temporary comfort, the kind that soothes the raucous pulse of my heart into something closer to a melody that wants to be sung, played out by the soft thrums of each beat. I want him to wait for me. I want to believe that those words will hold true for the whole four years I’ll be gone.

I’m trying hard not to be scared. I know what Daisy and Lo and Ryke and even my dad have all told me. That they hope against hope that Garrison and I are in for the long haul. That we’ll defeat the odds. But they’ve prepared me too. First loves are the hardest. Not everyone meets their soulmate when they’re still children. Not everyone falls in love once and never has to go searching again.

I’ve kept my heart open, because I want to believe the best of Garrison and me. Even in my creeping moments of doubt, where I’ve thought maybe I should stay in Philadelphia and not give up this boy who makes my heart sing and brings strength to my limbs and loves me even when I cry and crumble and shift anxiously on my feet. 

The truth is that I don’t want us to be a  _ maybe _ . I don’t want us to be an  _ almost _ . But the even bigger truth is I don’t want to be a maybe or an almost either. College - I have to do this for me. For the future I can make for myself. I have to make this choice and hope that the  _ us _ can survive it. Garrison and I - we’re four years shy of a love everlasting, and I need us to hold on until our fingers give out. 

So much of me is entwined with this city, with this store we sit in, with this boy holding me like he wishes we were made of the same soul. Willow Moore is not the same girl as Willow Hale. I’ve discovered what it means to be me. I’ve learned how to open my mouth and ask for what I want and stand on my own. And I owe so much of that courage to Garrison.

My silence stretches too long.

“What are you thinking?” Garrison murmurs. There’s anxiety in his voice, and I don’t like that I’ve put it there. 

My mind is racing, memories flipping through like leaves on the wind, beautiful and captivating. I am thinking of all the times Garrison held out a hand and waited for me to take it, towing a boundary but letting me cross it. I am thinking of conversations in the dark, a phone pressed to my ear while we whisper dreams too private to greet the daylight. I am thinking of the shell I lived in my whole life, slowly suffocating me, until Garrison stepped forward and offered to peel away a piece every day until I was ready to greet the world head on. 

“I’m thinking - I’m thinking that I don’t know how to be brave without you,” I tell him, and I can feel his body shake with the weight of my words. “I’m thinking I want us to learn how to stand on our own. You can continue to be good without me here to remind you of what you’ve already proven to be true, and I can stand up and make my way through the world without needing you to push me forward when I’m scared.

“I believe you believe you’ll wait for me.” Garrison opens his mouth to argue, but I push forward anyways, not letting him interrupt. I can tell it upsets him in a way, but I can also tell he’s proud of me for not letting myself go unheard. “And I hope we can. Maybe we’re better together than we are apart. But we have to find out how to stand on our own first. Think of this as our origin story.”

Garrison laughs around the hitch in his throat. His voice is thick as he asks, “Are we borrowing Lily and Lo’s superpowers?”

For a moment, I pause to think about that. Lily and Lo always joke about superpowers, but I remember their real ones. That their superpowers are loving each other. Their love story is one I think I’ll tell my kids someday. How my brother loved a girl so much, he nearly buried himself beneath the weight of it, but how in the end that love was so strong that it gave them both the strength to bend worlds and raise new ones. 

And I think of Rose and Connor. And Daisy and Ryke. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing three great love stories. Ones anyone would be lucky to have.

I just don’t want them for myself. I don’t want to be Lily and Lo, or Rose and Connor, or Daisy and Ryke. I want to be Willow and Garrison. Whatever that entails. 

“No,” I reply. “I’m sure they’d let us, but I think we should discover our own.”

“And what do you think our superpowers are?”

“I don’t know. We’ll have to find them along the way, I guess.” My voice drifts off.

I don’t want to think about three days from now. Or the four years after. I want to live right now. I want to think about how here and now and today, I am in love with boy and he is in love with me. Our love story, I don’t want it to be about how it ends, or how it doesn’t. I want our love story to be about the journey. I want people to think,  _ Willow and Garrison, well that was quite the adventure _ . 

“What if -” I begin hesitantly, but find the strength the raise my voice. With his skin pressed against mine and the dark of the night cloaking us like a blanket, I am braver than I have ever been. “What if we don’t think about the future? What if we just promise to what we’ve always done? Take it day by day.”

Garrison’s silence stretches long, but I don’t worry. I like that if I close my eyes and listen very carefully, I imagine I can hear him thinking. 

We were two lost souls, wandering a plane of existence without seeing the path. Now, we are found, painting our way bright red to show everyone how far we’ve come. I don’t know what’s around the next corner. I don’t want to know until I get there. The greatest thing about this discovery, about lighting the path and finding our way, is stopping to enjoy the view. 

And I want to admire this one. Us. Wrapped up in one another, in the place where we met and built a friendship and then something more. I think we might be something beautiful to behold.

“Day by day,” Garrison agrees. “And Willow?”

“Yeah?”

“Today, I am embarrassingly in love with you.”


End file.
